


S.S. Memoirs: Parselmouth

by ForgottenFace



Series: Salazar Slytherin Memoirs Trilogy [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Founders, Salazar Slytherin - Freeform, The life of, Trilogy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-05-09
Packaged: 2017-11-03 17:50:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/384201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForgottenFace/pseuds/ForgottenFace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Slytherin crest was drawn in silver, with the words S.S. Memoirs written under it. It looked like one of the oldest books on that bookcase and it was certainly the oldest book he had ever held. </p><p>The first novel of a trilogy about one of the Hogwarts Founders and one of the greatest Wizards of its time. From his childhood years, to his death at 130 years-old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

Hogwarts, 1937 a.D.  
  
A tall, blonde, Slytherin student made a turn on one of the 7th floor halls. He was running fast, holding a chess board and a bag with chess pieces. He kept looking over his shoulder, but no one was actually after him.  
  
He took another look over his shoulder. Hi eyes widened in fear and he quickened his pace.  
  
“Where is that room!” he mumbled to himself, making another turn. He finally came to a halt, and turned to look at one of the corridor’s walls. “Right. One, two, three,” he walked back and forth, alongside the wall, three times.  
  
A very old wooden door appeared on the wall, as if it had always been there. He opened it and got inside. The room behind that door seemed to be endless and full of old things, magical and normal. They were all covered with a thick layer of dust.  
  
He walked through the corridors of objects and books, searching for the place where he had been the last time he entered this room. He remembered where he had found the chess set. It was near a tiara, which somehow seemed to shine very brightly, although there was absolutely no source of light on that room.  
  
He saw the shine and followed it. Nothing had been moved since the last time he was there and he was glad that was so. There was a disturbance in the dust, with the shape of the chess set, on a pedestal. The boy put the set exactly the way he had found it and took a step back. For a few moments nothing happened, until the dust that was around the pedestal covered the chess set.  
  
The boy lost his balance by the sight, knocking some books off a bookcase behind him. The sounds of the books lading on the floor echoed through the room and the boy gasped in terror. He quickly picked up the books and put them back in the bookcase. He looked at them with curiosity, some of them looked ancient. He took one off the shelf at random and looked at its black leather cover.  
  
The Slytherin crest was drawn in silver, with the words _S.S. Memoirs_ written under it. It looked like one of the oldest books on that bookcase and it was certainly the oldest book he had ever held. The boy opened it and skimmed the first page. It was handwritten and although the book looked very old, the ink on the pages looked fresh.  
  
The boy decided to take the book, to ease his curiosity. He knew better than to do that, but after what had happened with the last thing he had took from that room, he figured nothing could be worse than that.  
  


* * *

  
  
After dinner, the boy went to the Slytherin common room and waited until every student had gone to bed. He took out the book, sat next to the fireplace and started reading it.  
  
 _Kingdom of Britannia, 1050 a.D._  
  
 _My time has finally come. I can’t say that it’s too soon and that there is much to live for yet. My life was far from uneventful. In my deathbed I write this, for all my memories came flooding back and they are far too precious to be forgotten._  
  
 _My journey began on a little village just north of Norwich, Norfolk, 130 years ago. I was the middle son of 5 children. My mother, Genevieve, was very young when she had me, but after the labour and work 5 children ensued, she appeared twice fold her age. My father never changed for as long as I can remember, he always looked the same._  
  
 _We were one of three wizarding families in that village. But after what came to be known as The Oblivion proclamation, by the Muggle Pope, all of that changed._


	2. Chapter 1

Two young boys were playing in front of an old stone house, in the edge of a forest. They kept waving a twig each and yelling strange words in what seemed like Latin. One of the boys, a small blonde and thin child, threw himself backwards on to the dirty ground.  
  
“ _Stupefy_!” he raised his twig towards the other boy.  
  
“I duck that,” the second boy rolled on the ground. He looked older than the first boy, but they could almost pass as twins, same blonde hair and grey eyes.  
  
“That’s not fair, Alfred. You always duck when I cast the spells!” the younger boy got up and cleaned the dust and leafs from his clothes. “That doesn’t happen in a real fight!”  
  
“Well, this isn’t a real fight and I’m older,” Alfred laughed and twirled the twig on his fingers. “When our baby brother is old enough you can do the same.”  
  
“When Osmond is old enough, I’ll be too old to play with twigs and fighting make believe battles,” the little boy broke his twig in frustration.  
  
“Alfred, Salazar, come inside for supper!” a woman was standing on the doorway to the old house, carrying a baby in her arms.  
  
The two boys ran towards the house. The apparently small house was bigger on the inside, big enough to accommodate three families. It was warm and it smelled of food.   
  
Two girls were already setting the table. Like the two younger boys, they looked identical, with blue eyes, pale skin and dark blonde hair. The only way of distinguishing the two was by the freckles that covered the face of one of them.  
  
Salazar and Alfred sat, hungrily waiting supper. Their mother had made porridge as usual. Salazar frowned at the thought of it, he knew that food was always scarce, but it wasn’t an excuse to be eating the same thing every day.  
  
“Mam, where’s Da?” Salazar asked. His father was one of the most popular men in the village. He was a very humble man that liked helping others. Being a wizard was another reason villagers often came to their home asking for potions and spells. He would, sometimes, return with some coins or small animals as a way of payment.  
  
“Your father is helping Wilfred Carpenter cure his sick wife,” Salazar’s mother replied. She sat at the table next to him and began feeding the little infant in her arms. “He should be home soon.”  
  
A few seconds later the door opened and in came a tall bearded man. He had grey hair and sparkling grey eyes. He was carrying two dead rabbits on his back, which he hung on a hook net to the entrance door.  
  
“It was a difficult one,” Salazar’s father said, sitting next to his wife and cleaning a drop of sweat from his brow. “But I think she’ll recover soon.”  
  
The arrival of the patriarch meant it was time to start eating. Salazar’s stomach was rumbling, so, despite being tired to always eating the same thing, he ate happily. The two dead rabbits that his father brought mean they would be eating meat the following day and he couldn’t wait.  
  


  


Salazar and Alfred went to sleep earlier than the rest of the family. Spending the day playing and running around always left them too tired to stay up with their parents. Their father had told them not long ago that soon they would have to start working and that they should enjoy it while they can.

  
  
The next day the two brothers woke up early. Their father had already gone out probably to help some other Muggle and their mother was preparing the rabbits to cook them later. The two twin sisters were already on the fields working to get some money for the family.  
  
After eating some pears for breakfast the two boys run out of the house eager to play with the rest of the children from the village. There were always dozens of kids around, so there was always something to do every day.  
  
They saw a small group of boys talking with each other, near the lake. When Salazar and Alfred reached the boys, they became quiet all of a sudden and stared at the brothers.   
  
“What?” asked Alfred, frowning.  
  
“My Da said we shouldn’t play with you anymore,” the tallest boy of the group said, turning his stare to the ground. “They say that your family is no good.”  
  
“Our family his _what_?” Salazar raised his voice. He didn’t like when someone talked about his family that way. “Answer me!”  
  
“Your family is no good,” the boy said again, now looking Salazar in the eyes. “My Mam says that you are Lucifer worshipers and that you are evil.”  
  
Salazar and Alfred threw themselves onto the boy. Each of them punching and kicking as hard as they could. The rest of the boys around them joined in on the fight and soon the two brothers were struggling to defend themselves, so they kept on kicking and punching.  
  
Salazar felt himself being lifted, but he kept fighting, until he noticed that he was being carried by the waist by his father. His brother was on the opposite side of the tall man yelling to be put on the ground.  
  
Their father took them to the house and finally let them go. Alfred ran to the door, but was stopped by his mother, who was blocking the door.  
  
“What happened with your faces?” she asked with her hands on her hips.  
  
Salazar cleaned something wet from his lip and noticed that it was blood. He looked at his brother and saw some gashes on his face and the collar of his robes were ripped. They were both filthy from rolling on the floor, fighting.  
  
“John, the son of Wilfred Carpenter, said that his father wouldn’t let them play with us,” Salazar said, staring to the floor, ashamed.  
  
“And you thought it was wise to pick a fight with Wilfred’s boy because of it?” the father asked.  
  
“No. We thought it was wise to punch him when he said that our family worshiped the Devil and that we were no good,” Alfred looked defiantly at his father.  
  
The boys’ mother gasped in terror. “Why would they say that?”  
  
“John said that his father had told him that,” Alfred replied.  
  
The parents looked at each other shocked.   
  
“Go clean yourselves,” their father ordered them and turned to his wife. “Why would he say that? I helped him yesterday.”  
  
“I got an owl this morning about Wizard families having to go into hiding, because of some proclamation the Muggle Pope sent,” Salazar heard his mother say, before closing the door of his room.


	3. Chapter 2

_Hogwarts, 1937 a.D._  
  
“Stop reading that book, we’re late for class,” said one of Joffrey’s Slytherin friends, holding the dormitory door.  
  
Joffrey closed the old black book ornamented with the Slytherin crest. “You go, I’m right behind you.”  
  
“You’re always reading that darn thing,” his friend shook his head in disdain and slammed the door behind him.  
  
Joffrey scanned the room to make sure he was alone and waited until he could no longer hear anyone. He quickly jumped out of bed and dragged his trunk from under it. He hid the book in a concealed pocket inside the trunk that he had made himself.  Some of his Slytherin classmates had the nasty habit of going through other people’s personal things and he didn’t want them to find that book.   
  


* * *

  
  
  
  
_Norwich, Norfolk, 927 a.D_  
  
“I want to go, too,” complained Salazar, rubbing his sleepy eyes.  
  
His father and brother were preparing to leave – Alfred with the biggest grin on his face Salazar had ever seen. Today Alfred was going with their father to buy a wand, their parents had decided that it was time that he started to learn magic.  
  
“It will be your turn soon,” Salazar’s father kneeled in front of him and put his big hands on the boy’s shoulders. “I know you can’t wait to be able to cast spells and be a ‘proper wizard’, as you call it, but you are too young. A wizard needs to be able to control himself and have discipline. This is no child’s play.”  
  
“But I am not a child, father!” Salazar protested, shoving his father’s hands off his shoulders.  
  
“You are and the way you are behaving right now proves it,” his father got up, kissed his mother goodbye and left, Salazar’s brother running after him.  
  
“Salazar, go degnome the garden,” his mother pointed through the window, towards a small maze of vegetable plants. “And don’t give me that look!” she added when Salazar frowned angrily.  
  
“Why do I have to do it?” Salazar complained, folding his arms.  
  
“Because I’m telling you to, do you want me to get the broom?” his mother put her hands on her hips and gave him the menacing looks that only she knew how to do.  
  
Salazar ran to the garden, almost smashing into a brown barn owl. The bird hooted angrily and pecked him in the head.  
  
“Stupid bird,” Salazar muttered, shooing the owl away and rubbing the place where the owl had bit him.  
  
He did like degnoming the garden, if he was doing it with his brother. They would compete against one another to see how far each of them could throw the gnomes. Alone, it was a boring chore.  
  
He grabbed a small gnome by the ankle and watched as the little creature fought against his fingers, before flinging it away beyond the dark fence surrounding the vegetable garden.  
  
“Salazar, come inside,” he heard his mother’s voice coming through the open door that lead to the house. The young Slytherin huffed, frustrated, and swung one last gnome away before going back inside.  
  
His mother was standing on the entrance, waiting for him. She waved him in. “Come on, get inside,” she said.  
  
“What did I do?” Salazar knew that when his mother interrupted his chores something had happened and it was usually something he had done.  
  
“Nothing. Sit,” his mother pointed towards a chair, next to where she was gutting one of the rabbits Salazar’s father had brought. “I want you to tell me about the Wizarding Uprising.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Just do what I said!”  
  
“It begun when Eorpwald of East Anglia became a Christian,” Salazar started.  
  
“Converted,” his mother corrected. She was now looking worriedly out the window. “What year was that?”  
  
“627 AD,” Salazar sighed. “Right after that, he decided to _convert_ the rest of the people to Christian an—“  
  
“Christianity,” his mother corrected him again, the rabbit all but forgotten now.  
  
“ _Christianity_ ,” Salazar hated to be interrupted. “And proclaimed that Paganism and magic were to be banned. Anyone found using magic would be imprisoned and burned.”  
  
“Who opposed him?” Salazar’s mother had now a piece of parchment in her hand, which she kept twisting and turning nervously.  
  
“Ricberht. He was one of the most powerful wizards of the time and led a rebellion against Eorpwald,” one of Salazar’s sisters, Gwendolyn, came in from outside the house. She was carrying the youngest member of the Slytherin family. The baby was sleeping and sucking on Gwendolyn’s index finger.  
  
“They killed each other at the battle of Cambridgeshire, in 632. 20 thousand Wizards and Muggles died that day,” Hazel, the freckled twin, said grimly, coming in after her sister. “Neither side won, so the kingdom stayed the same.”  
  
“Until now,” Salazar’s mother sighed, still looking out the window.  
  
“You always make us tell this story,” Salazar protested.  
  
“If you forget the past, what stops you from making the same mistakes?” his mother said, turning her eyes towards the window again.  
  
“Sal, Sal, look at my wand,” Alfred burst in through the door, holding what looked like a twig. “It’s apple with dragon’s heart string.”  
  
Salazar reached for the wand, but his brother took it away.   
  
“I just want to see it properly,” Salazar complained.  
  
“You can look at it, but not touch it,” Alfred said.  
  
“But that’s not fair, I’m not going to do anything to it,” Salazar tried to get a hold of the wand again, but Alfred was faster and hid it inside his shirt.  
  
“Boys, don’t argue,” their father’s commanding voice echoed through the house. “I want everyone here this instant.”  
  
All of the Slytherin family gathered around the fire, where the mother was already cooking a rabbit stew. Alfred was waving his new wand about, sending sparks in all directions.  
  
“ _Expelliarmus_!” their father bellowed, with his wand pointed towards Alfred. The boy’s wand flew across the room. “You are not allowed to use a wand until you know how!” he put both wands inside his robe’s pocket. “I want you all to pack your belongings; we’re leaving in the morning.”  
  
“What? Why?” Hazel asked.  
  
“Don’t argue with your father, just do what he says,” their mother said. “Now, please.”


	4. Chapter 3

Salazar went to bed with a funny feeling on the pit of his stomach. There was something about how his parents were behaving that was weird, but he brushed it off as adults being adults and quickly fell asleep lulled by his brother’s rhythmic snoring.

He dreamed a weird dream. A gigantic snake was wrapped around his body and tightening its grip, until he screamed “ _STOP!”_  The snake unwrapped itself, looked at him and hissed a distant “ _Wake up, Sal! Wake up!”_

Salazar reluctantly opened his eyes. His brother was violently shaking him.

“What? Stop it!” Salazar rubbed the sleep from his eyes.

“Can’t you hear it?” asked his brother, raising his index finger.

“Let me sleep,” he turned around and tried to get back to sleep.

Suddenly there was a scream just outside the house. It made Salazar’s blood run cold and he got up instantly. He saw his twin sisters stir in the bed next to his. There was a red flash of light, followed by the whinnying of a horse and a crash.

“Children, get up!” Salazar recognized his father’s voice.

There were two more flashes of red, making the Slytherin children straighten up; both twins were holding their wands and ready for battle. They were still four and ten and their knowledge of duelling spells was limited, but still their freckled faces showed a determination that Salazar had never seen in them and that helped him calm down.

One of the twins put her index finger to her lips, signalling for them to keep quiet, while the other gestured for them to follow.

Both their parents were out of bed, the baby was crying in its cot. One of the twins picked the baby up and tried to calm him down. Only when their little brother stopped crying did they continue. The front door was out of its engines and through the cracks they could see an orange glow. The smell of smoke was in the air and the screams outside the house still raged on.

Hazel, one of the twins, pushed the door to clear the exit and they were faced by a horrific scene. A hundred men in horses were swarming the small clearing that led to the Slytherin’s house. Each of the men was using a suit of armour made of a dark metal that Salazar had never seen before and each of them was also carrying a sword and light shield made of the same material as their armour. Fires were blazing around them. A dozen wizards and witches were sending spells against the horsemen, but to no effect – all spells and curses would rebound of the armours and shields and fly out in all directions, making the night sky alight with colours. The rebounded spells would, more often than not, hit someone and knock them out, or hit a tree casting it on fire.

Salazar saw his father trying to fend off one of the horsemen; he managed to make the horse fall, bringing the rider down with it. Before the rider could regain his footing, Salazar’s father took his sword and ran it through his opponent’s stomach.

“Children!” Salazar heard his mother’s voice scream

Salazar turned around just in time to see one of their attackers swing his sword and his mother falling with a gasp.

“GENEVIEVE!” Salazar’s father started running towards his wife, one of the rider’s jumped out of his horse and hit him with his shield.

Salazar’s heart stopped and he looked around. It looked as though time had slowed down; everywhere he looked there was blood and screams, the spells had stopped flying and the men were jumping from their horses. He saw as one of his twin sisters was being caught by one of the attackers and the other being blocked by another man as she was trying to run away with the baby.

Alfred was still next to him; he looked pale and terrified. A drop of sweat fell from his brother's brow on to the ground - it was enough to get Salazar out of his haze just in time, two of the men were walking towards them with their swords ready and a malicious look on their faces. Salazar tugged Alfred’s arm, but his brother wouldn’t move.

“Alfred,” Salazar slapped his brother hard across the face. “We have to run!”

Alfred swallowed his fear and turned around to follow Salazar. The men were running after them with long steps, but the two brothers had the advantage of knowing the woods from all the years of playing there. When they were past the light of the fire, Salazar looked around.

“The dark will help us-“

“Run, Sal! RUN!”

To his horror, Salazar saw his older brother being carried by one of the men and disappearing out of the woods. Deciding it was better to fight than to run away, Salazar grabbed the biggest stone he could find and ran after his brother and his captor. The other man grabbed his arm before Salazar could throw the rock.

“ _Run, Sal!”_ he could still hear Alfred’s faint voice.

Salazar kicked the man in the shin, but hit his armour instead and hurt his own foot. The man laughed. The laughter rang in Salazar’s head; the echo seemed to come from all directions and rage, horror and panic shot through Salazar’s body like a curse. He felt the stone still in his hand and aimed it towards the man’s head. There was a loud _clunk_ from the impact and the man released him. Salazar saw a trickle of blood come down from the man’s nose before running away as fast as he could.

The man said something that Salazar couldn’t understand and started after him. The man was faster and Salazar could hear his footsteps getting closer.

“You’re mine, ya’ little shit,” said the man.

Salazar shut his eyes, whishing he would be far from there and felt the man’s hand brush against his right arm. Salazar stretched his arm away from the man’s reach and lost his balance. A second later the young wizard crashed hard against the rough stone floor and felt a sharp pain shoot through his right arm.

He cried out in pain, before scrambling to get to his feet and run again, but after two steps he ran against something stony and fell backwards. He tried to get up again, supporting his weight in his right arm and felt the strongest pain he had ever felt. He ran his left hand through his right forearm, it hurt just to touch and it was all that Salazar could do not to cry.

He tried to look around, it was pitch black, but quiet. He could no longer hear the sound of the man who was running after him.

Salazar got up and felt the thing he had crashed against – it felt like a solid stone wall. He walked along the wall, which led to a forest. Dawn was breaking and through the dim light he could see that he had just gotten out of a cave.


End file.
